Faith | A bowl is just a bowl, unless it’s holding a life lesson

A life lesson in four bowls.

I have four Corelle bowls that are work horses in my kitchen, from fridge to microwave for a thousand uses. Well maybe just one hundred uses, as I’m not much of a cook.

My bowls are plain, light cream-colored. I never thought about how plain they are until I found, at a thrift store, four Corelle bowls the same size, white with a lavender edge that’s slightly fluted.

I buy bowls at thrift stores and donate them to a homeless shelter serving a poor and somewhat isolated rural community.

People at the shelter do not have to be clean and sober, just in need of a bed, a meal, and services that offer dignity and hope. Behind every face there’s a story of trauma, pain, bad luck and worse choices, all kinds of reasons why these folks struggle to hang on day to day.

I’ve donated a lot of plain bowls. But I’d never seen ones as lovely as the white bowls with the fluted lavender edge.

I was planning to keep them for myself, and donate my four plain bowls in their place. No one would know that I’d kept the nicer bowls and donated the others. A bowl is a bowl, isn’t it? It’s not important what it looks like as long as it’s holding a serving of soup.

I found myself “forgetting” to pack up the plainer ones to take to the donation site.

Days went by and both sets of bowls sat on the kitchen counter. I continued to use the plain ones rather than make the switch. Something in me was resisting this change and it certainly wasn’t a sentimental attachment to the plain bowls.

A teaching in my Christian tradition, from the Gospel of Matthew, is that Jesus said, “... whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”. I pictured myself going through the food line at the shelter, taking a pretty bowl for myself and handing Jesus a plain one.

But I wouldn’t do that! I’d be sure to hand Jesus a pretty bowl. But I wouldn’t know it was Jesus, it would be “one of the least”. If I want to hand a pretty bowl to Jesus, I need to hand over the pretty bowls to the shelter residents.

Did I somehow think they weren’t worthy of the pretty bowls because they are regarded by many people as “the least”? I don’t think “worthiness” was part of what I was wrestling with. I was discovering that my delight in the pretty bowls made me think of the delight of others in having their food in one of them.

I was remembering that we are all “the least”, all broken and challenged and struggling and brave and hopeful and in need of help and something beautiful.

I know that there are times in our lives when something as seemingly insignificant as getting a pretty bowl from the stack in the soup line can lift a suffering spirit. I have had days that bleak.

A line of poetry says: “Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread and give us roses”.

No one would know, except me and the God who speaks to my heart, that I’d kept the nicer bowls and donated the others. A bowl is a bowl, isn’t it? It’s not important what it looks like as long as it’s holding a serving of soup. Or holding a life lesson in how people are so much the same in our joys and struggles, and all are brothers and sisters in the eyes of God.

The lovely bowls, having served their purpose in my home, went off to the shelter where Jesus can always be found among my brothers and sisters.

Rev. Jan Griffin is the Congregational Developer for the Southwest region of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane and living in Richland. Questions and comments should be directed to editor Lucy Luginbill in care of the Tri-City Herald newsroom, 4253 W. 24th Avenue, Kennewick, WA 99336. Or email lluginbill@tricityherald.com.